April 3, 2007

Lots going on this month on the Smart Answers front, so let’s get right to
it:

Recently Added Smart Answers:

– Search Engine Strategies 2007. Familiar with this
important search industry gathering? The next one is April 10-13 in New
York City.– Taxes. They’re due April 17th this year, you know. We have Smart Answers
for both the Federal
and State levels,
fully updated with the latest info.
– NCAA Basketball Tournament history. Whether it’s the madness from last
year or
twenty years ago, now you can credit Smart Answers with the assist.

April 1, 2007

Sorry for the Sunday posting, folks, but we wanted to announce before the press
got wind of it.

We’ve had a company-changing development happen over the last few days, and
we’re finally at a point where we can tell you about it. For the details, check
out this video
announcement from Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone.

Plus, between panels we hijacked a vendor’s display equipment
to do a quick AskCity demo and impressed the heck out of them. All in all,
a strong Ask.com showing this year.

KEYNOTE: PETER HORAN

Peter used his keynote speech to offer the big-picture take on local
search and how AskCity exemplifies that. A pair of highlights:

1. The first decade of local content was about brand; the next decade
will be about relevance. Live in San Jose? Look to the SJ
Mercury News site. Live in Los Angeles? Try the LA
Times. No more. Now, users are looking beyond brands for quality content–no
matter where it comes from.

2. Local content exists between two extremes:

– Broad subject matter relevant to a large audience (e.g. a trend piece
from The New York Times or local
news)

Peter finished up with a quick presentation of AskCity, showing
how it leverages top online brands and deep content sources like Citysearch
and recent acquisition InsiderPages
to create relevant local search.

Ryan stood out in his panel (among reps from Judy’s
Book, The Bakersfield Californian,Outside.In, and local data vendor Urban
Mapping) largely by being the only search-driven site on the panel.
And while there was no agreed-upon definition of what "Hyperlocal"
meant (Facilitator Peter Krasilovsky
dismissed the term with a "we all know what we’re talking about,
right?"), most of the panelists had the same measurement for success:
ad sales. Ryan countered that AskCity’s yardstick is quite different.

"When someone comes to that search box," He explained, "and
we give them exactly what we want–the right result, the right content,
take them to the right page–they’re going to come back. That’s success."
He explained. "Or to take action on AskCity–to book (a dinner reservation)
on OpenTable, and then to come back
again–that’s success too." He also mentioned that AskCity had no
specific plans to include ads, but didn’t rule it out.

We can still remember back when Spring Break meant something. That’s why, for
our curiosity and your edification, we’ve taken a couple of data cuts from the
weeks just before. It’s an interesting portrait of what Spring Break’s about:

Spring Break: Top Searches

More people searched on "When is Spring Break?" than the next twenty
queries put together. But once searchers got past that–or remembered that they
owned calendars–the breakdown was a pretty accurate reflection of what most
of us think of when we think of Spring Break:

(1) A surprising amount of people are searching from warmer climates like Orlando
and Atlanta.
Maybe that whole getting-out-of-the-cold theme we learned from The
Sure Thing isn’t as prevalent as we thought.

(2) Where are the Northwest and Midwest in all this? Chicago
is the only midwestern city in the top 10 , with Chicago suburb Des
Plaines coming in at #13 and Minneapolis
at #17. Maybe they’re all staying home and sledding.

March 7, 2007

What, you think we’d launch an incomparable, doors-blowing product like AskCity and just
leave it out there? We’ve been whipping up a fresh batch of upgrades, and are ready to announce the latest: search-enabled drawing tools.

If you’ve used AskCity already (or read our launch
announcement), you know that it incorporates a drawing palette.

You can mark up any map with lines, circles, polygons, etc. and send the marked-up
map to friends.

But now, you can use those drawing tools to focus your search on a specific area.
Just draw your shape around the area you want to search and click on the magnifying
glass to open a search window.

The line tool lets you search a single street, no matter how long or short it is.

You can even use the shapes to outline several areas, and do separate searches
on each. It’s a handy tool for searching when you know what area you’re looking
in, but don’t know the name of what you’re looking for.

Circling the Perfect Bean

Say a friend tells you about a great but hard-to-find coffee place–but all
she remembers is that it’s at the intersection of Gough & Fell Streets.
So you circle the intersection and search it:

AskCity returns two options within the area you’ve circled…

…and by using AskCity’s close-up and aerial photo functions, you see that
one option is right on Gough Street…and the other is on Linden, a tiny
side-street just off the intersection. Hard to find? Not anymore.

We search-enabled the AskCity drawing tools to make your local searches quicker,
more accurate, and in a lot of cases, easier. Give
it a try and let us know what you think!